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Birmingham Tokens

Thank your for this information on the token it’s amazing how it ended up on river bank on the river Cole babbs mill. And it was a least eight inches deep under the mud,
 
Jamie allen said:
Thank your for this information on the token it’s amazing how it ended up on river bank on the river Cole babbs mill. And it was a least eight inches deep under the mud,
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Yes I was wondering about that.
It seems itinerant farm workers got paid in tokens which had to be redeemed and maybe someone had worked on the Norfolk farms and hadn't or maybe couldn't redeem it before coming to work on Babbs Farm.
oldmohawk
 
maypolebaz said:
I agree, the pre decimal value of the token would be one and a half pennies, or three 'apence as we used to say.
The metal fragment interests me. At first the second two pics seem to show a fragment of a shell from where the driving band was. There's no indication of what size this fragment is but, in the first two pictures, the metal looks segmented and was manufactured that way. How about this being a piece from a Mills bomb ? I can imagine a Home Guard or Army unit throwing a bomb into the river to get rid of it.
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It’s definitely does look like a piece mills bomb. Thank you maypolebaz
 

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Hi,

I'd be 99 percent it's a piece of an anti aircraft shell, very common all around the country
Always handle them carefully, as they dont seem to corrode, and the shattered edges
can be like razors.
The Walpole Highway is a causeway that to the best of my knowledge was built across that area
of the fens by the monks of Thorney Abbey. Surrounded by very rich farming land.

Kind regards
Dave
 
Thank you dave89 for your feedback it’s definitely sharp and for a small piece of metal it’s got a lot of weight to it. And for the token how old do think it might be. Many thanks Jamie
 
The Highway
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Walpole Highway is a village, with two others sharing Walpole in their names.
This is slightly higher ground and was the only route from Norfolk to Lincolnshire as it was surrounded by fens. suggest the Romans were the first major developers of the route but Thorney Abbey would have maintained and repaired it.
 
Hi Jamie,
I can only guess that the token is probably 19c, and agree with an earlier posting
that it is an agricultural token. Its not likely to be for circulation as change, being 1 1/2d,
but could be the payment for say picking a sack of fruit or veg. They were probably cashed
in at the end of the working day for real money, and that would have been an incentive to work all day.
I remember picking beans for BirdsEye in Suffolk in the 1950s, and we got 2 shillings a sack.
Believe me, it was well earned!
Kind regards
Dave
 
The volunteer agricultural camps (I mentioned them in a post a few years ago) usually worked for farmers of canneries and paid cash. I went on them during school holidays and was always paid in cash. Yes. it was hard work, but interesting and you got to meet folks from other areas. I must admit I got away with the age limit as I was well under 17 and a half when I first went. No chance of that today, more is the pity.
 
With reference to post 15. It looks to me like it is a piece of driving band from and Anti aircraft shell. It does look a little green on part of the photographs which would be Verdigris as they were made of copper. These were around the bottom of shell and got the grooves from the rifling in the barrel which was designed to spin the shell for greater accuracy. The test will be to determine what metal it is? What goes up must come down and it is well documented that AAA (Anti Aircraft Artillery) shells cause a lot of damage and injury on the ground.
 
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